"‘So this is what I will do to you, Israel; because I will do this to you, get ready to meet your God, Israel.’ He is the one who makes the mountains and creates the wind and makes His thoughts known to people. He changes the dawn into darkness and walks over the mountains of the earth. His name is the Lord God All-Powerful." (NCV)
We will meet the Lord.
Each of us. There is no getting around this fact. Whether or not we believe in Him, whether or not we’re obedient to Him, whether or not we want this to happen. We will meet the Lord and at that time we will truly understand that He is God and we are not.
In Hebrew, His name here is YHWH ‘Elohiym Tsobeh. YHWH—sometimes pronounced Jehovah and by others Yahweh—is the name that He has given Himself. ‘Elohiym means the true God. Tsobeh is the host of angels that goes to war. God has established that there are two sides to creation: those who are with Him and those who oppose Him. Because He is a God of justice, He will oppose those who oppose Him and He will embrace those who love Him. But we don’t love Him according to our own desires or our own designs. We must love Him according to His desires and His designs. Why? Because He is Yahweh the true God. It’s His turf, His rules, His game plan.
God’s plan—His plan all along—has been to create a companion suited for Him, a companion for all eternity, that would be compatible with Him. Compatible means sinless, someone who would agree with Him, understand Him (as far as any creation might understand Him), someone who would be in tune with Him and His desires. A bride . . . and that bride is the Church. We are that companion, created and saved to become suited to live with Him outside of time, for what we can only describe as eternity, time without end, but what is really a life without the constraints of time. And it’s God’s desire that all persons would be made pure from sin so that they can be part of His companion.
"The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness, but is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance" (2 Peter 3:9 NKJV).
He is "longsuffering." This Greek word means "to be patient in bearing the offenses and injuries of others; to be mild and slow in avenging; to be longsuffering, slow to anger, slow to punish." (Strong’s G3114). We have to remember, this earth and all of creation is His. He made it. He established the rules. He is the only One Who has the right to have a say in what happens. It’s all His! We have no rights, no right to establish, no right to determine except that He has allowed it. He made us with free will so that we would freely come to love Him, to want to please Him, to want to be with Him. He won’t force us, but He longs for us to come to Him. His longing is so intense that He is willing to be slow in avenging, slow to punish when He has every right to wipe us from the face of the earth. He is longsuffering because of His love for us!
"God shows His great love for us in this way: Christ died for us while we were still sinners." (Romans 5:8 NCV).
The breadth of this is overwhelming when you think about it. God Himself—as His Son Jesus—came to earth and allowed Himself to be manhandled, wrongly convicted, and killed just so we could be reconciled to Him because of our sin. The Lord Jesus paid the price for what we did! And He did it because He loves us so much. But that price paid is only effective if we embrace it. Why? Because God is preparing us to be His eternal companion and what we do in this life fully determines what happens after we die. Once we die, we will face Him. Each and everyone of us. It doesn’t matter what we believe. It doesn’t matter what we do. It doesn’t matter whether or not we even believed He exists.
We will meet Him.
The question is . . . when we do meet Him, will it be as His enemy or as His adopted child?
© 2014 Robin L. O’Hare. All Rights Reserved.
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